What to Expect When Your Employee is Expecting
By Adam Morell, JD, Assistant Vice President, Product Compliance, Sedgwick
Cathy joined ACME Shipping & Friends (a fictitious company) as a package car driver, a job that specifies the ability to load and carry packages up to 25 pounds as an essential function. Shortly after her four-month anniversary, Cathy informed her manager that she was six months pregnant, and her doctor had advised her not to lift 25 pounds for more than two hours per day for the duration of the pregnancy. Cathy still wants to work and has requested that ACME work with her to find a solution that incorporates the lifting restriction.
What must ACME do? What should ACME do? The answer, of course, is that it depends.
But first, a little background. Each year, approximately 5% of working Americans experience a short-term disability (STD) of six months or less.1 Pregnancy is the most common reason and accounts for an estimated 22.3% of all STD cases.2 Thus, situations like Cathy’s occur every day, and there are many considerations ACME will need to keep in mind when assessing Cathy’s request.
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